


just seek and you shall find

by atlantisairlock



Category: Charlie's Angels (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, F/F, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, POV Second Person, Rescue, Sirens, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21704116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: Your name is Elena and you are born of the sea.
Relationships: Rebekah Bosley/Elena Houghlin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 85





	just seek and you shall find

**Author's Note:**

> miles: ... vampire au?  
> astrid: ... werewolf au?  
> me: ... SIREN AU? 
> 
> ... i also don't know. holy shit i have... NO FUCKIN CLUE what happened here. 
> 
> title from 'kings' by mmxj.

Your name is Elena and you are born of the sea. You are named for the flashes of lightning that split the sky at the moment of your birth. Your sisters call you a daughter of the night and whisper about darkness, destruction, and curses that have no end. 

You are a siren and your gift is your song. Your sisters sing and they lure entire ships into the depths of the great blue, never again to resurface. Your sisters sing and they feed on sailors' souls and the last screams to leave their lungs. Your sisters sing and men throw themselves to their own deaths. 

You sing and not even the waves break against your voice. Your sisters cannot hear your voice, but you hear theirs. The murmurs grow louder. They call you broken. They call you a blight upon your people. You try other ways and means to become what you were born to be, but the skies go dark, rain lashing down and thunder roaring through the heavens. A bolt strikes a ship in the distance and all hands are lost too far from your coven to steal for their own. 

You are cast out to fend for yourself. You are told to return only when you have rid yourself of whatever sin plagues your soul and makes you unworthy of your birthright. Return before then, your sisters warn, and they will tear you apart themselves. 

You go where the sea takes you, adrift. You try to speak to the beasts of the ocean and they flee in fear. You use your voice and the men on their ships scarcely turn a hair. You pray to the gods themselves for an answer, and get none. 

You are a siren and you do not have a song.

Your name is Elena and you are alone. The sea holds nothing for you and your skin burns when you try to find your way onto land. You have no wings and the sky is not yours to touch. Days - or years, or centuries, you know not - pass and the only voice you hear is your own, a voice heard by no other. The sun rises and it sets. You swim and swim in an endless sea. You want to go home, but you have no home to call your own. 

One day you find yourself on a dull grey rock in the middle of blue ocean waters that no human has ever set eyes upon. You have not attempted to speak nor sing in what feels like eternity. When you open your mouth the only thing that manages to come out is a single scream, high and desperate. It rings out into nothing, unheard by all, as it always has been, for all your life.

Only now - unheard by all, but one.

And like an echo, faint and scattered, you hear it. 

"Hello?"

Your name is Elena and you sing for no one. Your song is a weapon but it has never found a mark. You scream and a voice responds, for the first time you have ever known, and you falter. For the first time, you listen. 

"Hello? Is that - is someone out there? Please, if you're there, I need - water, please, I'm dying, please - "

You swim cautiously to the source of the sound. You draw closer and closer and you see a boat. It is no grand ship your sisters have ever called to, no ten or twenty men falling over themselves to hear their songs.

It is no ship, and its sailor is no man. When you peer close it is a woman you see, lying in the bottom of the boat, pale and weak. Her eyes are open but they are glassy. She looks at you and attempts to raise a hand, but it falls to her side. Her voice cracks as she speaks. "Water," she begs. "Please." 

The woman is the first who has ever heard your voice. If you sing she will drown herself and you can bring her body back to your sisters and ask to come back home. If you sing, she will hear. 

You do not. You swim towards the nearest island you know and bring the boat with you. When you clamber onto the shore your feet scream. You ignore the pain. You take a deep cup from the human's boat and stagger through sand and grass and soil until you find what looks like the wells your sisters used to speak about when they told stories about the mortal world. You fill the cup to the brim and bring it back to the boat. You press it to the human's lips and urge her to drink. She does - every single drop. 

You do this twice more before the human stops you. She pushes herself onto her knees and crawls out of her boat onto the shore, into a nearby cave, just deep enough to shade her from the sun. 

"Thank you," she rasps, and sleeps.

Your name is Elena and you are no human. You know little of their customs but for what your sisters passed on to you. This much you know - that they require sustenance of the mortal realm to survive. They require food. Every step you take sends daggers of pain shooting through you, but it gets easier and easier to bear. You fill the human's cup once more and find pale yellow fruit amidst the trees. You leave it by her side and await her awakening. 

It is dawn when she opens her eyes once more. You see her from the shore where you remain half-submerged. She eats ravenously and drains her cup, then gingerly stumbles out of the cave and looks around. When her gaze falls upon you, she comes closer. She wears a smile. "It was you. I didn't dream it." She pauses and extends a hand to you. "My name is Rebekah. Thank you. You saved my life."

You cautiously take her hand and are relieved when you feel no pain - so it seems the human's lands will hurt you, but they alone might not. The woman's smile remains. "What is your name?"

"Elena," you say. The word comes out rusty, for how long it has not left your lips. Your heart pounds when the human nods. When the human _hears._ "Elena." She regards you curiously, warmly, with an expression you have never seen on a man's face. You have only know them screaming to their deaths. Never like this. "Are you human?"

You recall your sisters saying that there are humans who do not believe in your existence. You remember their great pleasure in proving them wrong by luring them to their deaths. But this human's smile is sincere and her voice is gentle. You make a choice and your choice is truth. "No."

The human nods. "A child of the sea?"

"In a manner of speaking," you reply. 

"Then the sea has been kind to me," she says, and you think _perhaps to me as well._

Your name is Elena and your birthright makes men your prey. But here you are on the shore of an island conversing with a human who should be under your thrall but remains free. You watch as she gathers more fruit and fills her cup and returns, again and again, to the shore where you remain. She sits and offers you a distinct red fruit you have never seen. "Have some."

"I do not eat," you tell her. She murmurs an apology and takes it back. "I didn't know." 

"Most do not." You allow yourself a smile. "Most do not believe we exist." 

The human - Rebekah - snorts. "Most are fools," she says. "You said _we._ There are more of you?"

You hesitate, and she notices, quickly continuing. "I'm sorry. You don't need to tell me if you don't wish to." 

You shake your head - it is mere heartache and loneliness that makes the words hard to say, and you trust this human. "I have sisters. But I do not swim with them." You do not say why. That is too much to speak of, even now. Rebekah nods and does not push. "I prefer my own company, as well."

"And that is why I found you half-dead in your boat?" You ask, not without teasing humour. She laughs. "I have always wished to sail. My family did not approve - they believed a ship was no place for a woman, and they have now disowned me for... a great multitude of things. I left my home and ran to the docks. I stowed away, and I was found. The captain put me on my boat with no provisions and told me to find my way back to land."

She is much like you, you realise. One who does not belong. Adrift on the sea, alone. You meet her eyes and do not blink. "Where will you go now?"

Her smile does not fade, nor the warmth in her voice. "I don't know," she says. "But I have all the time I want to figure it out."

Your name is Elena and the island becomes your home. You do not spend every waking moment on the shore, but you know where to return at dusk every evening. You catch fish in your hands and bring it back to be cooked over a fire. You swim to inhabited land, miles away, and steal new clothing for your human. You watch over her as she sleeps. When Rebekah regains her strength she takes her boat out and explores the waters around her, with you swimming by her side, but when night falls you both return, faithfully, where she has come to settle. 

You tell her of the nearest islands where humans make their homes. She shakes her head and plots her course to avoid them. 

"You are not lonely?" You ask one day, as you both watch a school of flying fish sail across two miles east of your island. 

She smiles down at you. "I have you. What more do I need?"

Your name is Elena and you have sisters. You almost forget this until the day Rebekah takes her boat out further than she has been in some months. She recounts a story to you about her childhood days, and you listen. You listen so closely you do not hear the song until she suddenly stops speaking. 

When you realise what it is your blood goes cold. You look up at Rebekah and her eyes are glassy. She begins to row away, closer and closer to where you know your sisters will be. You can hear their songs now, mingling together in a call of enchantment. Rebekah can hear you. She can hear them too.

You remember the men your sisters enticed into clambering off the sides of their ships to fill their lungs with saltwater and sink into the depths. You look at Rebekah and know you cannot survive that fate should it befall her. You try to stop the boat. You try to get inside and cover her ears. You cannot, you cannot, and every second she is rowing closer and closer, ready to die - 

"Rebekah!" You scream - you scream as you have not since that fateful day you found her, dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean. You cling onto the side of the boat and scream her name louder than you have ever known yourself capable. "Rebekah, don't listen. _Don't listen! Listen to me!"_

Deep down you are sure it is hopeless. Your sisters' songs can be resisted by none, not even her. There was never anything you could do to save the sailors they killed, and you are sure there is nothing you can do to save her either.

But you scream her name, one more time, put all your desperation into it, and she falters. You see the moment she comes back to herself. She turns wildly to look at you, confused, terrified. You reach out for her. "Get me on the boat!"

She pulls you in, just in time, and you scream for her to row back to your island, to your home. You press your hands against her ears and make sure she keeps her eyes on you. You don't let her go until you no longer hear your sisters, until you are sure she can fall under no spell again. 

"What was that?" She whispers when you finally pull back. "What happened?"

The fear in her eyes is unmistakeable and you feel your heart ache. You almost lost her to something you could have been. You almost lost her to the people you are. 

You know that the truth is the only thing you can give her, and you know it will take her from you. Her - the only being who has ever heard you when no one did. Who needs you as much as you need her. Who reminds you that you are not alone. 

But if you love her - and oh, you do - then you must. 

"Those were my sisters," you say, watching her hands go still on her oars. "Those were sirens."

"Sirens," she repeats, like she knows exactly what that means. "I was - I heard sirens." She hesitates and looks at you. "I would have died." 

You look away, the ache in your chest not receding. "Yes." 

"Then you are a siren." 

"Yes." 

"But your voice has no thrall," Rebekah says, sounding terribly confused. You nod, biting your lip. "I have never been able to lure with my songs. No man has ever heard me. No being in the world has ever heard me, but you." You inhale shakily and do not allow yourself to cry. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I was afraid." 

Rebekah stops rowing entirely, and you can do nothing but look back at her. The confusion has left her expression to be replaced by something deeper, something you cannot comprehend. "Elena, what do you mean? Are you saying that before you found me, nobody had ever heard your voice?"

"Yes," you reply. "And I thought nobody ever would. I was a siren without my song, Rebekah, and my sisters told me to leave and never come back until I found it. I never belonged. Not with them, not with mortals - not with anything." 

You expect her to tell you to leave. To get off her boat and go and never darken her island again. You are a daughter of the night. Your curse has no end. Never enough a siren, never enough a human - belonging nowhere in the world. 

You do not expect her to lean in and cup your face in her hands - for her to kiss you, long and deep. She lingers, her voice soft. "No. You belong with me." 

You look at her, feel the tears in your eyes, saltwater like you were born from but never truly called your own. "I am a siren, Rebekah. My birthright is death, even without the means to confer it. I do not belong in the human world."

"And neither do I," she says. "But I belong with you. And I think that is enough."

And for the first time in your life, you feel your heart settle. What you are is many things and what you are not even more. You have no song, but you have her. And she is right.

It is enough.

Your name is Elena and you are in love. 

You are a siren and your sisters do not call you one of their own, but you have a human who does. Her name is Rebekah and she is yours for the rest of your days. 

You have no song, but every night she sings for you before she sleeps, and you know you are exactly where you are supposed to be. 


End file.
